Resilient Leadership
How are you weathering the storms of leadership?
This is the time of year many business leaders secretly dread. The end of the end of the year. The all-important Q4. The push to finish the year strong. To make sales quota and stay in budget. To finish projects, accomplish year-end goals, plan for the upcoming year, hit your targets, power through, get it done. And, oh by the way, don’t forget holiday gifts, approving time off requests, dealing with the latest wave of employee sick days from the flu/Covid, planning the team party, and maybe just maybe trying to squeeze in some semblance of a life outside of work.
During challenging times, it can help to develop your skills of resilience. Resilience is a crucial characteristic of high-performing leaders. It isn’t about being tough. It’s about being able to recover from setbacks, adapt to change, sustain energy levels under pressure, cope with disruptive challenges, and keep moving forward in the face of adversity. It’s about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, while still being able to lead others with empathy, courage, and conviction.
How can you become a more resilient leader? Try these 4 tips:
- Take care of you. When you are at your best physically and mentally, challenges can be easier to overcome. Be sure you are getting enough sleep. Practice mindfulness. Make time for self-care.
- Embrace optimism. The experts at EQ-I know best about the importance of optimism: “Optimism, the ability to remain positive despite setbacks, often differentiates between ‘star performers’ and others in the workplace. It permeates almost every application of Emotional Intelligence from helping you persevere to enabling you to view change as a good thing.”
- Reach out. Whether it be relying on team members or colleagues for support, learning to delegate to lesson your workload, finding a friend or mentor to talk with when times get tough, or hiring an executive coach to help you bring out your best self, reaching out to others for support is a strength, not a weakness. Ask for help, advice, support, guidance. You are not alone. You do not need to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Especially not this time of year.
- Learning and development. Resilience isn’t something you either have or you don’t. Just as with almost every leadership skill, resilience can be developed. Think of resilience as muscle that can be made stronger by working at it regularly. With consistent positive effort, self-reflection, adjustment, and repetition, resilience can become a crucial strength you can rely upon even during the darkest times.
Want to develop your resilience muscles further? Catapult can help. Contact us today.
Additional resources:
Forbes: Resilience In Leadership: How to Lead and Win Despite Change and Obstacles
Harvard Business Review: What Leaders Get Wrong About Resilience
Janice Kovach: Resilient Leadership | TED Talk
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